Weekend Box Office Report: February 28-March 2, 2014

It took the power of Liam Neeson (and Jesus) to knock over the stack of toy blocks and claim the #1 spot this weekend, as NON-STOP opened with $30 million!

That opening didn't reach the same altitude of Neeson's last time shooting up bad guys -- TAKEN 2 started with $49.5 million in 2012. But it came in higher than UNKNOWN, Neeson's previous effort with director Jaume Collet-Serra, which opened with $21.8 million in 2011. Including THE LEGO MOVIE and THE NUT JOB, NON-STOP is now the third movie featuring Neeson (or at least his voice) currently in theaters.

Audiences were more than happy to take flight with Neeson, giving the PG-13 airborne thriller a solid 'A-' CinemaScore, but critics weren't quite as enthused with an average of 58% on Rotten Tomatoes.

Despite his impressive connections, SON OF GOD found himself walking on water in second place with a $26.5 million opening. (Not sure why they didn't save it for Easter weekend...) Edited to feature-length from (or before, to be accurate) "The Bible" TV miniseries, the story of Jesus Christ was uplifting to paying crowds who gave it an 'A-' CinemaScore, while critics were more agnostic judging by the 26% average at Rotten Tomatoes.

THE LEGO MOVIE finally toppled from the top spot, down into third place with another $21 million as its fourth weekend in theaters brings its domestic total to $209.3 million. George Clooney's WWII movie THE MONUMENTS MEN seems to have sturdy legs as it marches forward a spot from last weekend, now in fourth place with $5 million as it crossed the $100 million mark worldwide.

3 DAYS TO KILL dipped from second to fifth place as the action-loving moviegoers opted for the new Neeson instead. The PG-13 Kevin Costner thriller lost 60% off its opening for $4.9 million in its second weekend, not far ahead of the remake of ROBOCOP (which is up to $187 million globally) and Paul WS Anderson's expensive volcanic melodrama POMPEII in seventh.

Although Disney's FROZEN comes out on home video in two weeks, it's still chilling out at the box office in eighth place as it skated past $1 billion worldwide this week (its 15th weekend in theaters). The Kevin Hart one-two punch of ABOUT LAST NIGHT and RIDE ALONG rounds out the list.

Outside the chart, romancesENDLESS LOVE and WINTER'S TALE got dumped out of the Top 10, while an R-rated alternate-jokes edit of ANCHORMAN 2 was released onto 1300 screens for $1.3 million. The now-retired Hayao Miyazaki's final animated film THE WIND RISES expanded to nearly 500 locations and picked up $1.6 million, and the Russian WWII movie STALINGRAD stormed onto 300 IMAX screens for $500k.